


anything but normal

by preromantics



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:09:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-show canon. <i>She's standing in her kitchen at the sink, washing the dishes that Jenna hasn't got to yet -- standing just like her mother did before, letting the too-hot water rush over her hands until the prickle of heat induced pain becomes a simple numbness.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	anything but normal

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 9/15/2010.

It wasn't until a few months into her relationship with Matt -- they're going for it this time, really -- that Elena pays attention to Vicki. She's reckless and everything Elena isn't, never wants to be, but there is something in the way Elena watches her with side glances from Matt's living room during their movie night: the graceful way Vicki moves around the kitchen, high on something, weaving around the counter and the cabinets to some sort of internal music. 

Vicki makes them cookies -- burnt and doomed from the start, her mother never taught her like Elena's had -- and takes a whole gigantic plate for herself. The plate she presents to Matt drops sloppily, cookies spilling over onto Elena's lap and Matt gets mad, "Vick, come on, go relax," as she brushes them, hands everywhere, from Elena's lap. 

They don't taste too good, even when Matt reaches out so Elena can take a bite of his, some standard couple ritual of feeding each other. She makes a face and they both laugh: at the cookies, at Matt's crazy sister, at everything. 

Elena doesn't want to end up like Vicki, for her sake and for Matt's. 

-

Three months later, she does. She's standing in her kitchen at the sink, washing the dishes that Jenna hasn't got to yet -- standing just like her mother did before, letting the too-hot water rush over her hands until the prickle of heat induced pain becomes a simple numbness. 

"You know you'll waste water like that." Vicki's behind her, and Elena straighten's her shoulders and turns around. She hasn't seen Matt since the summer started, she doesn't want a lecture on anything. 

"Not that I care," Vicki amends, wide on a grin and a laugh when Elena meets her eyes. "Don't look so glum."

Elena laughs at that, she has no idea what she looks like, but she can guess. Vicki seems to glow in the kitchen light, in the sunlight pouring through the window over the sink: limbs loose and pupils too-wide, her hair a mess in an uncontrolled way that Elena can remember. 

"Why are you here?" Elena asks, but Vicki laughs like it's not a real question, laughs and backs up to lean against the counter, supporting her body against the noise coming out of her. Elena hasn't laughed like that in -- in a long time. 

Vicki brings a finger up to her mouth and stares at Elena, making a shushing noise. That's funny to her, too. So it's a secret, then, Elena figures, and everything is either a secret or too-real for her, has been all summer, so she's not in the mood for the druggie sister of her ex-boyfriend laughing like the world is fine, like everything is okay (everyone keeps telling her that, and it's not, not yet, it's only okay on wide-ruled pages of paper that she can dig her pen tip into too hard, pressing through to the pages below, making an imprint).

Elena turns to leave the sink counter, to slip out the side and go upstairs, away from whatever Vicki is doing in her house, away from the worried thoughts it brings about Jeremy and even about Matt. 

Vicki turns and catches her at her wrist. "Hey," she says, "hey. Smile, everything is so -- so shitty and sad all the time. It's not like that for me, not all the time, come on." Her voice is too-loud in the quiet kitchen, she's talking too fast, she's spinning Elena like Elena is a doll, turning her out to the middle of the kitchen floor. 

That's because you're on drugs, you're messed up -- Elena doesn't say.  _She's_  messed up but she's getting better, good, it's all going to work out. 

"Come on," Vicki says, her joy at the sunlight streaming down on her face completely foreign. "Dance with me."

Elena remembers watching Vicki dance around the kitchen, the months behind her just blurs of memories. Dancing in her kitchen -- she used to stand on her mother's feet when she was little and her mother would walk them around the room in a waltz while they waited for the oven to pre-heat. 

The kind of dancing Vicki pulls her into isn't a waltz at all. Vicki spins, loose-limed and head tilted up, her fingers tangled in-between Elena's own, pulling her along to an imaginary song, brushing up against her and sparking feeling all over her skin, the sort of touch Elena hasn't allowed herself in months. 

She's only dancing. She's not like Vicki, she's not going to give into the pills and the drugs and whatevers that Vicki takes to get rid of her shitty life, but -- dancing, that she can do. It's like dancing around her bedroom to the radio with Caroline and Bonnie before a pep rally, their skin the lotion Caroline liked best, the kind with a shimmer. 

"See, it's good, it's always good," Vicki says, and Elena laughs, tilting her head up to the ceiling and into the sunlight from the window, too, like it might make her as full of joy and warmth as it makes Vicki. It doesn't, but it comes close as Vicki spins her in too many loops to count, as she presses up against Elena in a grind and then backs off, keeping them connected and spinning and touching just by their fingers. 

It's just as Elena's spine starts to feel liquid and loose with her movements, as her throat feels rough with the strange movement of laughter, that whatever internal song Vicki was dancing them around to ends. Vicki collapses against the counter and breathes hard, her chest rising and falling with it, the skin of her neck and collarbones slick with little droplets of sweat. 

Elena feels breathless but in a different way. Vicki pulls her close until Elena is leaning against her, can feel her breath like it's her own. 

Vicki's pupils are still wide and too dark when she looks down. She untangles one of their hands and uses it to brush the tangle of Elena's hair from her forehead, the pads of her fingers lingering on Elena's skin. 

"You're so good," Vicki says, warm like it's something that makes her happy. "You and your brother, you're both so -- so, something."

Elena raises an eyebrow at her, and Vicki's hand moves to comb through her hair, fingers catching on the little knots dancing around the kitchen had made to rest on the back of her head.

"I don't make sense like this," Vicki says, shaking her head. She ducks down before Elena can think of something to say and presses her lips, soft and dry, in the space her fingers had just been, against Elena's forehead. She stays there, warm pressure and skin, and then drags her lips down, catches Elena's own -- lips parted in some sort of shock, maybe a little in welcoming. 

They kiss like that, open mouthed without tongue, just pressure and movement until it's all Elena can feel, breathing against Vicki, forehead to forehead, strange all over. 

Vicki pulls away, though, brings her hand out from the tangle of Elena's hair, twisting the strands before brushing her knuckles down Elena's jaw. "You''ll be fine," she says when she pulls away, lightly, like it's nothing.

For the first time since people, since  _everyone_  has started saying that to her, Elena actually believes it.

Vicki squeezes their fingers together once, hard enough that the pressure lasts even when Vicki pulls away, goes dancing out of the kitchen and to the front door. 

Elena stands near the counter for a minute, her shoulders going straight again, her fingers flexing against her thighs. She turns and goes back to the dishes, though, sets the water to a less hot temperature, sliding against the sudden hotness of her skin in a cool, wonderful sort of way. 

Jeremy comes down the stairs -- Elena can hear him while she washes their mother's favorite coffee mug, the one Jenna has adopted without even knowing -- and he presses up against her shoulder besides the sink.

"Dishes," he says, "let me help."

Elena turns to him and laughs. "You hate doing dishes," she says. 

Jeremy shrugs. "Yeah. I do," he says. 

Elena tosses him the dish rag. "You can dry and stack," she says, and he grins at her, like she hasn't seen in a while. She grins back.

"You're in a good mood," she says, passing him the mug.

Jeremy's smile gets a little less wide, a little more self-conscious. Elena bumps their shoulders together, hard and fast.

"I am, too," Elena says, grabbing a plate to wash and realizing, belatedly, that it's true. 

Jeremy lets out a breath that might be a laugh to her side, and they finish the dishes in silence, normal.

  
  
  



End file.
